Tuesday, September 04, 2007

In a new book, Dubya says he was unaware that Bremer was going to disband the Iraqi army before it actually happened. Bremer himself begs to differ; he's showing the New York Times an exchange of letters:

After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

Of course, there may be less here than meets the eye. When Dubya was exercising his most substantive duty as (the nearly powerless) governor of Texas, deciding whether or not to spare convicts from execution, his main concern was that the proper legal forms had been observed. In New Orleans after Katrina, he not only said, but probably believed, that "Brownie" was doing a "heck of a job", because he'd gotten a proper dog-and-pony show, never mind the scenes of horror that were showing up even on Fox. And so, in Bremer's exchange, the Times is quick to observe that the note about dissolving the Iraqi Army is on the third page of the letter, hinting that even they think he might have simply not read that far.